At the top of a Turkish judgment, under the name of the court, two numbers stand side by side, each written as year and sequence: Esas No and Karar No. To a reader outside Türkiye they can look like one reference written twice. They are not. The first comes from the register in which the case was entered when it was filed, the second from the register of decisions, and an English translation that merges them loses the thread that later documents follow.
Why the numbers matter after the judgment
Later documents identify a judgment by its date and number. An appeal to a regional court of appeal states which court gave the decision, with its date and number (HMK Article 342(2)(c)), and an appeal on points of law to the Court of Cassation asks for the same (Article 364(2)(c)). An enforcement order based on a judgment gives the judgment’s date and number (Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law, Article 24(2)). In the other direction, an application in Türkiye to enforce a foreign judgment names the foreign court and gives the date and number of its judgment (MÖHUK Article 52). One wrong digit in a translation breaks that chain.
The suggested labels
“Case No.” on its own merges two registers, and the reader has no reason to ask which figure is which. The suggested rendering uses two labels: “Docket (Merits) No.” for Esas No and “Decision No.” for Karar No. “Docket” tells an American reader that this is the entry under which the case is followed, and “(Merits)” echoes the Turkish esas. For the second number, “Decision No.” may be preferred to “Judgment No.”. Karar is the broader Turkish word, and under HMK Article 294(1) only the final decision on the merits is a hüküm, so tying the label to the narrower English term would classify the document on the translator’s own initiative.
Numbers that look alike and are not
Rendering esas by its dictionary sense, “basis” or “main”, gives the number a meaning it does not have. A more common error is taking another number for the merits number. Interim measures are often decided under a miscellaneous matters number marked “D. İş” (değişik iş), which belongs to a separate register and gets a label of its own, for example “Miscellaneous Matters No.”. Prosecution documents carry their own set, such as an investigation number, a file number and an indictment number, and the indictment is addressed to the competent court (CMK Article 170(3)). Each number keeps its own label, and none stands in for another.
Layered numbers in higher court decisions
A decision of the Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) or the Council of State (Danıştay) can carry three pairs of numbers: the chamber’s own, those of the regional court decision under review and those of the first-instance court, all under the same Turkish labels. In translation each label names its authority, for example “Court of Cassation Docket (Merits) No.” and “Regional Court of Appeal Decision No.”, so the reader never takes the chamber’s reference for the trial court’s. In French the descriptive “numéro de l’affaire” and “numéro de la décision” are suggested rather than the French court labels “numéro de rôle” and “numéro de minute”, which would give Turkish registers names that are not theirs. In every language the digits, the slash and their order stay exactly as printed.